Kat Bruzios, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at UWB working in both the SMART and UW ALACRITY Centers. Dr. Bruzios’ research interests lie in the implementation of evidence-based prevention and health promotion programs, and the use of implementation strategies to achieve positive behavioral health outcomes for youth, families, and communities. She is particularly interested in the design, adaptation, and evaluation of implementation strategies – specifically how implementation strategies impact implementation outcomes and the processes (i.e., mechanisms) by which these implementation outcomes impact targeted program outcomes.
The goal of this study is to make the theory driven pre-implementation - Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools (BASIS) - to be most impactful and optimized for effectiveness and delivered in a digitized, resource-sensitive, scalable, and potentially sustainable way to improve school-based mental health providers’ implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP). The BASIS optimization project is funded as a component of the NIMH-funded IMPACT Center at the University of Washington.
We have developed – and are currently conducting a large-scale randomized trial of – at teacher-focused version of the Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools (BASIS) implementation strategy. BASIS-T is being tested in context of Positive Greetings at the Door (PGD) implementation. Details are available in a study protocol published in Implementation Science.
The aims of this project are to: (1) evaluate the usability of leading, evidence-based Tier 1 social-emotional and behavioral interventions (SEBI) and identify unique and common usability problems, (2) explore the links between SEBI usability and implementation and student outcomes, and (3) refine the USABILITY theory of change, develop a matrix of usability problems and redesign solutions, and articulate guidance to the field for designing usable Tier 1 SEBIs.